


The Soul Should Stand in Awe

by carryonstarkid



Category: Gallagher Girls Series - Ally Carter
Genre: Ally Carter - Freeform, Consider this chapter one, F/M, Gen, I do not know when other chapters will come up, I just really love matt, Lets see how Matthew Morgan joined the CIA, Multi, Past Gen, This is what we call a tentative post, but anyways!, gallagher girls - Freeform, i dont know what im doing, title is also tentative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-10-24 12:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10741308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carryonstarkid/pseuds/carryonstarkid
Summary: The story of Matthew Morgan, and why he is so endlessly loved.





	1. Chapter 1

Everyone has three things.

Everyone has three things that pull at the heartstrings, that are engraved into their most primitive instincts, that make up the very air that they breathe.  Everyone has three things that define them in a way that is equal parts undeniable and unregretted, and once you know someone’s three things, you know them as well as they know themselves.  Sometimes you can even know them a little bit better.

For example:

  1. Matthew Morgan is, inexhaustibly, a mama’s boy.
  2. There exists, in the depths of his mother’s dustiest photo albums, a picture from Matthew Morgan’s very first birthday in which he grins at the camera, chocolate cake covering him from head, to fists, all the way down to his belly button.
  3. When the question is one of family and friends, Matthew Morgan’s answer is always, without exception, yes.



Of course, these are only guidelines.  Knowing a person’s three things can help you predict their behaviors, it can help you understand what they might be thinking, but it is never a certainty.  More than anything else in the world, it is people who posses the greatest capability to surprise.

Another example:

      4. One year ago, just before the summer of his junior year, Matthew Morgan spoke to a recruiter about enlisting in the United States Army.

It was an act that had surprised even himself.

A few short days after that initial meeting, he started to receive letters, brochures, packets—pages upon pages of information that told him not just about joining the Army, but also the Air Force, the Coast Guard, even the Marines—all of it stuffed into the crooked white mailbox at the end of his dusty dirt drive.  It was a betrayal.  Like someone had blown his cover.  The chaos that would surely ensue if ever his mother found out that he had, at any point in his life, considered going into combat was simply unimaginable.

And so, every day when he comes home, he leaves his rusty old pickup running at the end of the drive, the engine rumbling and sputtering as he rifles through the day’s mail.  There’s not much, usually.  Letters from Grandma.  A water bill every first of the month.  He sorts through the envelopes addressed to him and the envelopes addressed to his parents, then tucks his own pile under his shirt, keeps the incriminating evidence out of sight

The letters poke at his ribs as he climbs back into the driver’s seat and pulls up the rest of the drive.

When he finally makes it through the front door, he is greeted by the warm smells of his mother’s kitchen—peppers and onions and fresh venison.  Potatoes and cheese cooked to a delicious, golden-brown.  Pie made with fruit picked straight from Mr. O'Reilly’s orchard.  All of it.  It’s the kind of smell that seeps into the wood of the cabinets, into the beat up rug beneath the kitchen table, into the very walls that keep this house standing.  It’s home, in that special sort of way that a place alone can never be.

He tosses his parents’ mail onto the table that sits just inside the doorway, then starts up the staircase, two steps at a time, to unload the riskier letters onto his bed.  The plan is nearly foolproof except—

“Matthew Andrew, are you forgetting something?”

It’s the full name, just about—Matthew Andrew.  That’s the kind of thing that tells him that his mother’s question already has an answer, and that he ought to know it if he has any sort of sense about him.  With just as much swiftness as before, Matt backs down the stairs, dashes into the kitchen, and jabbers on with a whole day’s worth of conversation all at once.  “Hey Mama, how was your day?  Mine was good.  I’ll tell you all about it at dinner, but I got some homework I gotta do and I’ll be right back down.”  

He leaves a peck on her cheek, lets her continue with her kneading and her stirring and her flour.  She’s making his favorite biscuits.  There’s a big golden apple looking straight up at him from the little wicker bowl on the countertop, and he pulls it.  Takes a bite.  Talks through a mouthful of fresh fruit.  “Math homework.  Should be quick, s’only a few problems—oh _man_ , I gotta tell you what Mr. Fisher said to me today.  Said I was—and I quote— _a real talent_.”  The letters poke him again, right up against his lungs, slipping.  He begins a tactical retreat.  “But anyways, I gotta go upstairs and I’ll tell you all about—”

“Now hold on,” she says, dusting her hands clean.  “Where’re you running off to so fast?  Lookin’ like the barn is on fire.”

“Mama, I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Matthew,” she says.  “Are you sneaking those candies up to your bedroom again?   I oughta tell Mrs. Johnson that she shouldn’t even let you in that old candy shop anymore—”

“I ain’t sneaking any candy up,” he says, and he flashes that grin.  That one that makes the cheerleaders giggle, makes the teachers give extensions, makes his mama shake her head, because she knows the trouble it can cause.  “I promise.  I just gotta go to the bathroom.”

She doesn’t believe him.  That much is clear.  But she doesn’t have to believe him, just as long as she can trust him.  “If I find one more taffy wrapper up in that room—”

“You won’t,” he tells her.  “I love you, I’ll be right back.”

“You’re going to get _mice_.”

And with another peck on her cheek, he’s off, back towards the staircase and up the stairs again. When he shuts the door behind him, he’s out of breath, and he finally lets the letters fall from under his shirt.  They hit the floor with a series of crisp, crinkled cracks and soon Matt follows their lead, sliding, sliding, sliding down his door until he’s a part of the pile.  Until he’s sitting knee to chest, surrounded by his future.

His future used to feel a lot easier when it was still years away.

It’s the same old story—his ASVAB scores were great, has he ever considered becoming an officer, they’ll pay for school if only he agrees to a few weeks, months, years of active duty.  He rips open all of the envelopes, each one holding the same letter with a different seal.  The booklets are full of people in uniform, and he wonders if tan and beautiful are both requirements to serve his country.

His head falls into his hands, fingers running through his hair.  The letters always make graduation feel even closer than it already is.  He’s finally caught his breaths, but it’s still kinda hard to breathe, so he closes his eyes, takes in the country air.  

Breathe in.  He could handle it, probably.

Breathe out.  His mama would be heartbroken.

Breathe in.  It’s his duty to serve.

Breathe out.  But they just got out of Vietnam.

Breathe in—

The smell of his mother’s kitchen wafts under the crack of his door.  Despite himself, he can’t help a smile, and he knows that no matter how fast the future hits him, at least he always gets to come back home.  It isn’t much, but it’s enough, and when he opens his eyes, he sees an envelope that wasn’t there before.  Or maybe it was there.  He just didn’t notice it.

It’s the kind of thing that blends in with the rest, hiding in plain sight.  It’s white, just like all the others, except that when he picks it up, it feels so much heavier.  Nicer paper—the kind that has a texture to it.  He holds it up to the light of the window, testing it, and sure enough it’s completely opaque.  No give.  When his fingertips float across his name and address, he realizes that it’s handwritten script.  There’s a stamp in the corner that marks his mail as PRIORITY and Matt strains to remember when anything in Nebraska was ever considered first-class.

Something about this envelope makes him feel more important than the others.

When he opens it, he does so carefully, peeling away at the glue rather than ripping at paper.  There are no pamphlets, no posters.  Just a single letter, folded into thirds and printed on cardstock.  It’s typed, neat and tidy.  At the top is his own name, written out as _Mr. Matthew A. Morgan._ At the bottom, the signature of one Mr. William J. Casey, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Oh.   _Oh._

And all at once it’s like he’s caught his breath again, just to have it knocked right back out.  Bees wrap around his stomach, buzzing and stinging, grasping at this afternoon’s PB&J until it crawls back up his throat, hot and sour and sick.   He bolts up, hand thrown across his mouth, as he swings the door open and dashes across the hall.

The porcelain is cold against sweaty palms as he keels over and _heaves._  

He can’t decide what’s worse—the sound of vomit hitting toilet water or the smell it leaves in the back of his nose.  Taste, actually.  The taste tops it all, just as soon as it really settles into his throat.  He spits.  It doesn’t help.  And his ears feel stuffed up and his face feels hot and he’s so completely nauseated that he doesn’t hear the footsteps make their way down the hall, doesn’t notice the figure in the doorway until there’s a low, gruff scoff.

His father is the kind of tall that Matt hopes to match one day, and has the kind of mustache that he hopes not to.  He looks down his nose at Matt—over his glasses, never through them—and taps a rolled up newspaper on the crest between thumb and forefinger.  “Well.  You’ve looked better, son.”

  1. His father is an understated sort of man.



“Yeah,” is Matt’s only response.

There’s a beat, as though he’s waiting for Matt to hurl again, but finally he sighs and sets his paper down beside the sink.  There’s a washcloth hanging over the back of the faucet, and his father wets it with cool water.  Rings it out.  “This got anything to do with the fancy letter you got today?”

Matt looks up at his father, thinking for a moment that maybe this is a CIA thing.  That maybe his parents have been agents all along, and now it’s his legacy to receive this special letter on his eighteenth summer or whatever and—oh god, have his parents been secret agents this whole time?  “You know about the letter?”

But as soon as the words fall out of his mouth, he realizes how ridiculous it seems.  His father walks with a limp leftover from Korea, he’s mean and uncharming—nothing like James Bond.  And anyways, he’s just too much of a _dad_.  An over-the-glasses looking, newspaper-reading, cold-washcloth-on-your-puking-son’s-neck kind of dad.  “‘Course I know about the letter.  I know about all of it.  Your Mama does, too—you think we’re stupid?”

“Nah," he sputters.  "No, I just—”

“Every day we’d tell you to bring that mail in, and every day you’d tell us you forgot.  Then one day you start bringing it in like God himself told you it was your ticket into heaven.”  He almost laughs.  As much as his father ever does, anyway.  “Ain’t gotta be a damn spy to figure out you were hiding something.”

Then, as if cued, Matt vomits again.


	2. Chapter 2

So.  He lied.

So he told his parents  _ West Point _ instead of  _ Langley _ .  So he told his parents it was the Army—that he’d be going to school, that he’d be their star student, just you wait and see.  So at the last minute he’d switched out his train ticket to New York for a train ticket to DC and made his way to Union Station rather than Grand Central.  So he lied.  And he’s pretty sure he’s okay with that.

That’s the weirdest part, being okay with it.  Because his mama and his pops sat him down that night, honest and genuine and  _ worryful,  _ asking for all the facts.  Asking him, without a hint of judgment, without a hint of suspicion, what his next step was going to be.  They only wanted to know.  They only wanted to help.  And sure, they’d give him some grief, but they’d be happy for him and they’d support him, just as long as they knew the truth.

And although what he’d said had technically been  _ true _ —that the Army wanted him real bad, that he’s gotten offers from all over the country but this one called out to him, that he’d still write, even if he was on the other side of the country—it hadn’t been the  _ truth _ .  He has a feeling that, from now on, the truth would never be whole.  That thought makes him squirm.  That thought makes him guilty.

But it’s not like he’s just doing this for the hell of it.  The letter  _ said _ he couldn’t tell anyone.  And anyways he’s getting ahead of himself.  It’s an interview.  It’s just an interview.  Before he starts worrying about lying to his parents for the rest of his life, he should probably worry about actually getting the job.

“Uh, Morgan.  Matthew.  Matthew Morgan.”

She  _ looks  _ smart.  He’s not exactly sure what makes someone look smart, but the woman sitting behind the desk  _ is _ , in every way she can be.  Maybe it’s the glasses, wide and thick-rimmed.  Maybe it’s her posture, shoulders back and her chin held high as she types faster than Matt can even believe.  Maybe it’s the way she matches, in her crisply cut dress, the precision and the reservedness of the lobby that surrounds her—every last tile, pilar, and tabletop surrendering to either black or white, and nothing in between.

Matt can’t help but feel stupid in comparison.  Can’t help but feel entirely unqualified when the secretary looks like she could probably squash him like a bug, if given a reason to do so.

She slides a badge across the marble countertop.  It’s his yearbook photo with his name written below it, the word GUEST spelled out in bright red letters.  He doesn’t think too hard about how they got the picture.  “This is your temporary badge.  You will wear it, or you will not get in the front doors.  If you do get past the front doors without it, you will soon be found and likely tackled.”

Oh.  Okay.

“Until you hear otherwise, you will clip it onto your left-hand pocket.  Next, you will proceed down the corridor immediately to your right, whereupon you will find two doors to your left.  Go through the right-hand one.  If you go through the leftmost one, you will set off the alarms and will likely be tackled.”

He’s sensing a theme.

“At no point after you leave this campus will you speak about what you saw, heard, or otherwise came to understand.  If you do—”

“I’ll be tackled?”

“You will be sentenced to any number of years in federal prison for disclosure of classified government information, which has a minimum sentence of three years.”

“Oh,” is all he says, and he feels that same wave of nausea that he’s starting to associate exclusively with the Central Intelligence Agency.

“You’re being watched, Mr. Morgan,” she says, looking over her glasses at him.  “Very closely.  Try not to do anything that may result in regret.”

He’s just starting to think that her warning has come a little late—an entire summer too late, maybe—when she finally sends him on his way.  

Like a sheep in an open field, Matt can’t help feeling like he’s about to encounter a wolf.  Everyone here moves too fast, their strides long and purposeful.  One man walks with his finger waving through the air, calculating what Matt assumes is probably differential calculus, by the look of it.  Everyone around him looks bigger, badder, like they could eat him up and the world would be better for it.  Something about this place screams  _ inadequacy _ .

He proceeds down the corridor, moving forward only because it is too late for him to go back.  It had taken him a month to convince his mother to let him go—two to convince her that she wasn’t making a monumental mistake.  All the while he had spent his noons and his nights hunkered down at the local library, studying—studying everything he thought he’d need to know about the CIA, studying everything he could  _ find,  _ because finding any information on this place had been a learning process in and of itself.  It’s not just that he’s come to the edge of the country, it’s not that he’s lied to his mother.  It’s everything.  His retreat isn’t an option.  Not anymore.

So.  Forward.  Onward across dark, swirling marble, a badge over his heart and hope clutched in nervous fists, and—

Three.

There are three doors.

And then suddenly, there’s doubt.  Doubt that he heard the instructions correctly, doubt that he’s remembering them the right way.  Doubt that he’s in the right corridor, and doubt that he’s even supposed to be here in the first place.  Uncertainty blossoms in his throat as he tries to remember, exactly, what the secretary had told him.  Had she said two or three?  Had she meant the far right door, or the door directly right to the left?  Questions that he hadn’t thought to ask until he was forced to, and now he doesn’t know the answer. 

And it occurs to him that he’s not supposed to know the answer.  There’s a security camera at the end of the hall, and as broad as her directions had been, the secretary had made one thing clear: he is being watched.  

Matt knows a test when he sees one.  He’s spent his whole life learning how to take them.  Midterms, finals—he passed out of health class in his freshman year.  He got a 34 on his ACT and his principal even made him take the PSAT his junior year.  He got a 1500, which really kinda pissed him off because it was only twenty shy of a perfect score.  Even so, he’s  _ good  _ at tests.  He can pass them in his sleep—and in fact he  _ has _ , that one time in sophomore year biology.  And the thing about tests is that they aren’t really about  _ knowing  _ the answers.  They’re about guessing the best possible one.

The stakes are a little higher this time around, sure.  There was never a looming threat of being tackled by CIA security guards during his old tests.  Same idea, though.

Three doors.  He laughs.  Matt takes a deep breath, runs the math, and makes his choice.

He whips through the middle door, trying at least to appear confident, even if he feels anything but.  The trouble with this is that he ends up stumbling—practically falling into a little black room, no bigger than a closet—and comes face to face with a man more confident than he.

If the secretary had looked smart, then this guy looks imposing.  Everything about him—head to toe, left to right, makes Matt feel like he shouldn’t be here, like no one should be here, and the mere presence of this man leaves Matt clutched by the sudden, intense fear that he’s picked the wrong door.

He gulps.  “Uh, the secretary said—”

He’s interrupted by the click of a stopwatch and finally a pair of striking green eyes land on him.  The way this man speaks is strict, determined, and wholly, completely intimidating.  “Three minutes and twelve seconds,” he says through a squint.  “How?”

Matt hasn’t been tackled to the ground yet, so he figures he must be in pretty good shape so far.  “Three minutes since I left the desk?”

“Nah, three minutes since your mother packed your lunch for you.”

“Hey, ain’t no reason to talk about my—”

“ _ How _ , Morgan?” says the guy.  “How did you know which door to go through?”

Matt just shrugs.  “Monty Hall.”

“What?”

“The Monty Hall Problem,” he answers.  “You know.  The statistical analysis?  A contestant has to choose between three doors and behind one of them is a sports car, but behind the other two, it’s just garbage.  I chose a door, but then your secretary ruled one of them out for me—the left one, she said.  It was alarmed—”

“That’s not how the Monty Hall Problem works,” the guy tells him.

“Sure it is,” Matt says.  “Well, I mean, I guess I adapted it a little bit—”

“That’s how you chose your door?  You  _ guessed _ ?”

Matt shrugs again.  “Well to be fair, it was an educated guess.  Played the odds.”

The man just stares at him, blinks once, and again Matt finds himself feeling utterly idiotic.  He wants to know what this guy knows—wants to understand the stare.  But the fact of the matter is that Matt can’t read him like he can read the people back home.  He’s not in Nebraska anymore.

And so instead, Matt breaks the silence.  Tries to get more out of him.  “Why, is three minutes impressive or something?”

“Not at all,” he says.  “In fact, you’re the slowest so far.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“Did I get it right, though?”

And the man, dressed in all black, plucks the sunglasses from his collar, throws them over his eyes.  He pulls a leather jacket from the hook behind him and slides it over his shoulders, tucking the stopwatch into his pocket.  “If luck counts as  _ getting it right,  _ then yeah, you did,” he says, and there’s a moment when Matt feels a hot surge of pride in his chest.  

At least, until the guy says, “Except that it doesn’t, so you didn’t.”

And Matt’s never been particularly gracious about failing a test.  “That’s not really fair, man.  It wasn’t luck, it was—”

“What was the name of the secretary at the front desk?”

“What was… what?”

The man spins on him, hands shoved in his pockets, jaw set in stone.  “Her name,” he says.  “Did you catch it?  Or how about the memorial wall?  How many stars are on it?  How many windows did you walk past?  How many lights?  What was written in the seal that you  _ walked over  _ when you first stepped into this  _ building _ ?”

He hadn’t known what the secretary had meant, when she said he was being watched.  Not really, anyway.  He thought that was just her warning—the way they scare him into keeping his hands off the classified files or whatever.  Only now, on the receiving end of all this huffing and puffing, does he realize how wrong he was.  He is being watched—watched in what he does do and even more in what he doesn’t.  Watched in ways he can’t even imagine being watched.  Watched by everyone, all the time, even when no one is looking.  

“No,” says the man.  “Didn’t think so.  Not only are you a lucky son of a bitch, but you’ve got no idea how to use that to your advantage.”

He takes off again, swifter now, like Matt’s already wasted enough of his time.  It’s three steps to a second door, this one at the back of the room—a door that Matt hadn’t even noticed was there until the man is already pushing past it, the Virginian sun cutting away at the charcoal walls like it’s the first time light has ever been in that room.  “Let’s go, Morgan.  You’ve got one hell of a day ahead of you.”

“Wait!” Matt calls out, running after him.  “Wait, Mr…”

“Agent,” says the man.  “You’ll call me Agent Solomon.”


	3. Chapter 3

There’s more glass than he was expecting.

He always kind of expected that a place like this—the  _ headquarters  _ for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, home to some international secrets so classified that only a handful of people are permitted to know them—would be made up of stone and concrete and strength.  And it  _ is _ , in a lot of places, but there’s a lot of glass, too.  

Agent Solomon is about ten steps ahead of him and he most definitely fits under the  _ concrete  _ category. When he was real little, Matt used to grow up watching the Apollo missions on his family’s television set, remembers hearing about those black holes—the voids that suck up all the light, all the matter, all the energy around them.  He wonders if Agent Solomon knows about them.  Everyone has three things, but Matt can’t pin down a single one about this guy. 

“Keep up, Morgan,” he snaps.  “And pay attention.  This is your one and only guided tour.”

Matt represses the urge to point out the fact that, as far as tours go, this one has been unimpressive.  Instead, he quickens his pace and makes a point of looking around.  Of noticing things.  It’s a big, sprawling countryside and, if he looks out in the distance, he can see the Potomac, marking the border between Virginia and Maryland.  The cherry blossoms are long past full bloom, leaving only green to blow in the wind.  To his right: a gentleman with a slim black tie sits atop a stone, reading a book in the company of his ham and cheese sub.  To his left: a group of runners make their way down the boulevard.  The sun lands on the back of Agent Solomon’s shoulders, shining a spotlight on every last crack in that worn out leather jacket.

The building they approach is smaller than the last, made up of dusted bricks and ivy-lined walls.  It’s not a far walk, but still he feels as though he’s stepped back in time.  Agent Solomon leads him through a set of wooden doors.  Stars and stripes hang from the ceiling overhead and Matt remembers all of those letters he received in his crooked Nebraskan mailbox.

But Agent Solomon is still walking, so Matt doesn’t have time to stare.  It’s a left, then a right through a maze of narrow corridors with very little light.  If he didn’t know any better, Matt would say that Agent Solomon is trying to lose him, but then again maybe Matt  _ doesn’t  _ know any better.  

It’s one more left, sharp.  Crisp.  Solomon walks like he’s spent his whole life marching.  Matt knows better than to ask about it—knows that a soldier with a limp doesn’t share the story about how it happened—but he still wonders.

  1. Some time, in some capacity, Agent Solomon has served.



It’s not much, but it’s a start. 

And then he’s through an archway, years of knicks and cuts chipped into dark wood.  There’s already people here—a dozen of them, maybe—sitting at desks that belong in an abandoned schoolyard.  “Sit,” Solomon tells him.  “And keep quiet.”

Matt does as he’s told, slides himself into an empty desk.  Solomon just keeps walking, boots landing with certainty across stone floors.  It’s colder in here than it is outside, and Matt feels a chill run down his spine.  Clunk, clunk, clunk, one step after another until Agent Solomon is at the front of the room, standing at the right hand of an older gentleman who, if possible, looks even meaner than he does.

He’s just in the middle of wondering what, exactly, he’s gotten himself into when he hears the voice.  “Boy, are you  _ cute _ .”

It catches him off guard, the sound of a girl—the sound of  _ anyone _ aside from him.  For a moment it’s easy to get caught up in his own existence, to wonder what  _ he’s  _ doing, and what  _ he’s  _ supposed to do next, and all of the things that have to do with  _ him _ .  For a moment, he forgets there are other people there, until he hears her voice and turns to see—really, honestly—someone who may just be the most beautiful girl he’s ever laid eyes on.

She’s dressed in red, from the heels she wears to the sleek, silk ribbon that ties back her hair.  She’s the bright smile, cross-legged, green-eyed goddess that all his favorite bands sing about, wrapped up in confidence and certainty and everything else he wishes to be.  He can see adventure in her future, can see excitement in her soul.  He can’t help but stare as she blows a big, pink bubble, the scent of cinnamon stinging his nose, and when it pops, Matt swears he’s in love.

Her grin grows wider, then.  As if she can read his mind.  “What’s the matter, sweetie?” she says, smacking her gum.  “You ever seen a girl spy before?”

Matt tries his best to somehow tell the girl that, in fact, he hasn’t seen  _ any  _ spies before—at least, he’s pretty sure he hasn’t—but the words get lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth.  Instead, they land at the base of his gut, shattering into millions of sharp, tiny pieces.

And it’s like she knows this.  It’s like she can see right through him, because her smile grows impossibly wider.  “I like you,” she says.

“Abigail, don’t play with your food.”

That’s another voice belonging to another girl.  Unlike Abigail, she’s dressed up in gray.  Everything about her is practical, professional, and critical and where Matt sees adventure in the first girl, he sees simplicity in the second.  

“I am not playing,” says Abigail.  

“No,” agrees the girl in gray.  “Worse.  You’re teasing.  Leave the poor boy alone, he’s not going to be here long enough for you to properly break his heart.”

And  _ that _ ?  Well, that’s enough to get Matt talking again.  “What does that mean?”

But Abigail appears to already know.  She sticks out her lower lip—and god, is he ever a sucker for that lower lip—and she groans. 

“What does that  _ mean _ ?” Matt tries again, because more than anything—more than the girl dressed in red, more than the feeling she leaves in his chest—he wants answers.  “What do you mean, I won’t be here?”

“You never let me have any fun,” Abigail pouts.

“You always want to have too  _ much _ fun.”

The more they talk, the more it feels like he’s the only one who doesn’t understand.  The more it feels like these girls, and Agent Solomon, and everyone he encounters are keeping secrets from him.  The math just isn’t adding up.

“How can you tell?” Abigail asks.

“Abby, look at him.”

“But  _ Rachel _ —”

“Don’t do that.  Don’t whine.  Gallagher Girls do not whine.”

“They do sometimes.”

They are interrupted by Agent Solomon who, from the front of the room, clears his throat.  He stands at ease, with his hands clasped at his back, his feet a shoulder-width apart, and Matt is reminded of his father.  Of all the ways a soldier stands when he isn’t thinking about it.  

And if Agent Solomon is the soldier, then the man beside him is the general.  He stands just a little bit taller, and smiles as though he knows just a little bit more.  “The infamous Cameron sisters,” he says.  “Good to see you again.”

“A pleasure as always, sir.” says Abby, still smiling.

“I trust you ladies know the way to our security offices by now,” he says.  “I’m sure they’re dying to know just how, exactly, you managed to break in this year.”

“Why, whatever do you mean, sir?” says Abby, and the one named Rachel only rolls her eyes.

“It was a very good try, girls,” he says.  “Valiant effort.  Come see me after you’ve graduated high school and perhaps we’ll have a job for you then.  Agent Solomon—if you would escort our guests to security.”

“Actually, sir,” says Rachel, and there’s nothing in her voice.  Boredom, perhaps, but it is otherwise plain and unpanicked.  Nothing like the playful tone of her sister.  “I think you’ll find that your records show I really am supposed to be here this year.  Whether or not my sister is, I’ll leave to her to prove.”

The general smiles.  “Is that so?” he says, and he’s the kind of man who looks like he can spot a lie.  Who looks like he wins at poker, every time he plays it.  “Well, in that case, Agent Solomon, please show Abigail the way out.  We will see her in two years.  When she  _ graduates _ .”

Abby stands from her seat, prim and proper.  She doesn’t make a fuss, but she looks like she wants to.  Instead, she smiles at the general, a game well played, and graciously informs him, “You’ll see me before then, sir.  I guarantee it.”

Matt can’t help but watch her as she goes.  It’s as if the world stops, when she leaves.  As though he isn’t sure how he’ll go on.

The general, on the other hand, continues without yielding.  “As for you, Rachel, congratulations on completing your first  _ official _ assessment for the United States Central Intelligence Agency.”  He turns to the rest of the room, no longer distracted.  “And to the rest of you, I extend that same congratulation.  Although not rocket science, the ability to detect alarmed doors and successfully disarm them is a skill you will use every day.  Furthermore, it is a skill that you should avoid using, if ever there is an alternate path.  You’ve proven yourself bearably competent in that regard.”

So.  Looks like Matt’s the only one in the room who guessed.  Good to know.

“But bearably competent is enough to get you killed.  I assure you that this was simply your easiest assessment, and is by no means going to be your last.  I do not send young men and women into the field unless I know they are going to be coming back—otherwise you are simply a waste of government assets.  This is a job interview, ladies and gentlemen, and it will be the hardest interview you will ever have in your life.  That is because it will be the hardest job you will ever have in your life.  The right person for this job is not going to break at the first sign of struggle.  They are not going to get  _ caught _ .  If you are not prepared to face that reality, then I recommend you leave now.”

And there’s a moment—a moment when Matt thinks about it, in the back of his mind.  A moment when he misses his mother’s cooking, and Mrs. Johnson’s taffy, and his father’s grumpy grumbling.  A moment when he misses all of the things he  _ could’ve  _ been, instead of all of the things he  _ isn’t _ .  Homesickness washes over him so completely and so instantly, that for a moment he imagines himself walking out right then, and never looking back.

But then he looks at Rachel, and he remembers what she’s said.  Again he finds himself thinking that it’s too late to turn back.  That he has to prove someone wrong.  They’re tests—that’s all they are.  Tests.  And something deep down inside makes him want to pass them all.

Not one person exits.

The general gives a single nod, authoritative.  “Very well,” he says.  “In that case, welcome to OSS-1.”


End file.
